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Version/19.5
Shard Changes According to our recent survey, Shard drops were the #1 biggest frustration from the Trials update. Our biggest focus for this patch was to improve Shard farming time speed and improve your ability to specifically target farm the Shards you want. * Each Shard Pack now contains unique Shards. For example, Shards A, B and C can only be found in Chaos I Shard Packs, while Shards D, E and F can only be found in Chaos III Shard Packs. ** This also means that Standard Shards will no longer drop from within Chaos Shard Packs! * Each victory in Trials will guarantee at least 1 Chaos Shard Pack from that given difficulty. For example, when you beat Chaos II Trials, you will be guaranteed a Chaos II Shard Pack. * Before, Shard Packs had a chance to give you 1 Shard from a pool of up to 120(!) different Shards. In the patch, we’re reducing the Shard pool per pack from ~120 to somewhere between 25-35 Shards per pack, which will increase the chances of getting the Shard you want when you open a pack. ** Some Shards have moved around. If you'd like to know the new drop locations, you can use the following resources: *** DD2Tools *** The Interactive Shards Sheet *** Our official Wiki ** Some Shards have been disabled from dropping, but don’t worry, they’ll return with the new Chaos tiers just around the corner! * Standard Shard Packs and Chaos 1-4 Shard Packs are now available for purchase at the Gran’Masta and War Recruiter shops. * Victory Chests will now drop 2 Shard Packs guaranteed every time. ** When you win, you’ll receive one Shard Pack from that difficulty and one Shard Pack from any previous difficulty (for example, if you beat Chaos III Trials, you’ll receive 1 Chaos III Shard Pack and 1 Chaos II, Chaos I or Standard Shard Pack). By making Shard Packs drop unique Shards, increasing drop chances within a pack, guaranteeing Shard Packs per difficulty, giving you 2 Shard Packs guaranteed on every victory and adding a Shard bonus for consecutive wins (more details below), it’ll be much faster to get the Shards you want. Trials Consecutive Win Shard Bonus This patch adds the first pass on our Trials consecutive win bonus, which gives bonus rewards for winning consecutive random maps in Trials. This patch adds the Shard consecutive bonus; in future patches, it’s our goal to add XP and Gold bonuses, too. * Once you win 3 consecutive random maps in a row in Trials, you’ll activate the Shard consecutive bonus. On your 4th consecutive victory onward, you’ll earn an extra Shard Pack for as long as the streak continues. * This extra Shard Pack is a guaranteed Shard Pack from that difficulty. ** That means once you activate the win bonus, you’ll get 3 Shards guaranteed every victory (2 Shard Packs of that difficulty, 1 Shard Pack from previous difficulties) until the streak is broken. Sort Shards By Name Another pain point brought up in the survey was the frustration of trying to find the Shard you want within your Inventory. A popular suggestion (both in the survey and in the community) was a Shard filter that sorts Shards alphabetically by name, and we were able to get it in for this patch! We’re investigating more Shard filtering options and possible Shard icon improvements for future updates. * Added the “Name” filter in the All Bags -> Shards section, which sorts Shards alphabetically. Hero Management UI Changes Something we’ve heard from players with a high number of heroes is that it’s difficult to navigate to certain heroes in the new Hero Management UI. These changes are aimed at alleviating that frustration. * Added a Quick Select option. Quick Select displays up to 18 heroes per page. Select a hero to go to that hero’s position in the Rolodex. More improvements to the Quick Select feature will come in future patches! * You can now interact with any visible hero card in the Rolodex. Previously, you needed to use the arrows to navigate through the hero cards. (FYI: You can also use the Middle Mouse Wheel on PC to scroll through your hero cards.) Bag Quick Scrolling On the PC version, we’ve added hotkeys that will cycle left and right through your bags! This should make moving items from one bag to another much faster, especially for those of you who don’t have a Middle Mouse Wheel. * Q and E will scroll between left and right between bags on PC. * Reminder: The Middle Mouse Wheel can also scroll through bags, too! Return to Tavern No Longer Forces Everyone Back to Tavern If one person selects Return to Tavern, that person will leave. Not you. You will Continue, baby. And you’ll keep Continuing as long as you want to Continue. New Weekend Event Support This patch includes the ability to do Weekend Gold and Weekend XP events! Perhaps you’ll see them soon... New Title: Discord Defender We’ve added a new title that you can earn by being active on our Discord server! Defense Balance Changes With this patch, we’ve taken a serious look at the viability of all defenses as well as how several of our specific defense stats scale, and we made some fundamental changes as a result. We hope these changes will make many defenses, at least when it comes to raw DPS and utility, viable in later Chaos difficulties. You can read an expanded explanation of these changes in our Patch 19.5 Preview blog. * Defense Power scalars have been refactored on all defenses. Every defense receives more damage bonuses from Defense Power. * Defense tier upgrades now increase Defense Power and Defense Crit Damage much more significantly on low-DU defenses than high-DU defenses. ** As a rule, high-DU defenses are still more efficient at Tier 5 than low-DU defenses, but this makes the gap smaller and removes much of the penalty of using 20 DU defenses like Explosive Trap. * Defense Crit Cap increased from 30% -> 33%. ** Note: Hero Ascension Powers no longer break the Defense Crit Cap. * Defense Crit Damage scalars on most defenses are set to 500% that of the Defense Power scalar. Exceptions apply to certain unusual defenses, like Poison Dart Tower and Obelisk. * Defense Crit Damage Cap increased to hopefully unreachable levels. * Defense Speed has been refactored to apply consistent benefits across all defenses. * Attack Rate caps have been refactored. Primarily damage-dealing defenses have rate caps of 4x faster than base Attack Rate. Primarily utility defenses have a rate cap of 2x faster than base Attack Rate. ** We’ll keep an eye on this. We would ideally have similar rates on all defenses, but certain utility defenses become nearly unstoppable (by themselves) at very high attack rates. * Defense Rate shard no longer breaks the Attack Rate cap on a defense. * Default Attack Rate of some very-slow defenses has been slightly increased to reduce overkill damage inefficiencies on Goblins and other weak targets. ** Lightning Strikes Aura and Earthshatter are the primary beneficiaries. * All defense-based stuns, slows, and similar utility effects, including those provided through shards, have had their durations updated to account for the changes in Defense Speed and Attack Rates. ** In many cases, this means that the duration of these effects are slightly lower, as the defense can apply them more frequently at higher defense speeds. * Ascension Powers and Shards that increase the duration or power of stuns, slows, and other utility effects have also been rebalanced for the same reasons. * Defense Range Gambit Ascension Powers have been refactored and standardized across defenses. ** All many-target defenses (like the Flame Aura and the Flamethrower) may now gain up to a 25% increase in range from these powers. ** All fixed-target defenses (like the Hornet’s Nest and the Cannonball Tower) may now gain up to a 50% increase in range from these powers. ** We will keep an eye on these values and adjust accordingly, but we want fixed-target defenses to receive larger benefits from range upgrades than many-target defenses. * Fissure of Embermount now benefits from Defense Speed. * Gunwitch Sniper Roost tower has double the default crit chance. * Snaking Sands now benefits from Defense Speed and no longer has a hidden 12s cooldown. * Sand Viper’s Defense Power scalar heavily revised. Should now be much more competitive with other fixed-target towers. * Obelisk’s Smite and Fire mechanics have been heavily revised. ** Smite Damage and Rate are now displayed on Inspect. ** Smite rate now properly scales with Defense Speed and no longer has hidden cooldowns. ** Additional Obelisk buffs (Shield, Transmog, Bubble) now apply more frequently thanks to Defense Speed scaling. ** Fire (from maximum appeasement) stats are now more clearly labelled on Inspect. ** A chunk of the Obelisk’s damage output has been moved from Fire to Smite. While we like the mechanic of rewarding players for playing combat Mystics, we did not want the Fire effect to be so vital to the defense that the defense was useless outside of it. We’ll keep a close eye on this balance going forward and try to ensure its viability in a non-Fire spam role. * Lightning Strikes Aura health no longer breaks during tier upgrades, and the health has been reduced to sane values. * Reflect Beam description clarified to explain the Torpedo effect better. * All effects that modify the slow % of a defense or ability are now multiplicative, rather than additive. ** Tier upgrades, Ascension Power upgrades, and shard upgrades that improve slows are now multiplicative, rather than additive. This means that a 10% improvement on a base 65% Slow will only reduce the Slow to 58.5%. ** This was a necessary step to fix some defenses in achieving negative slows on enemies, as well as giving us more room to improve slows with additional shards / powers. ** This affects the Oil Geyser, Proton Node, Frostbite Tower, and the Dryad’s Powder Toss ability. * Frostbite Tower's chill/slow effect has been rebalanced across all Ascension Powers/shards/upgrades (no more moonwalking…) ** Through Ascension Powers/shards/tier upgrades, the maximum slow the Frostbite Tower can achieve is around 50% now, rather than being -15%... * Mystic’s Serpent’s Coil has been heavily improved. ** Benefits from Mystic’s defense Ascension Powers. ** Benefits from Defense Speed stat. ** While it still cannot be upgraded, it is a very efficient 20 DU defense now. * Poison Dart Tower’s projectiles deal basic damage again. We will be revising this defense’s mechanics again once technical upgrades allow us to handle the Crit Damage issues more gracefully. * Frosty Power shard no longer stacks with itself. ** We felt the power of this shard was strong enough on its own that allowing it to stack, especially in conjunction with a specific other shard, was giving too much bang-for-the-buck. * Colossal Fissure scaling stat changed to Ability Power and now deals damage properly Hero Balance Changes * Increased default mana regeneration on the Apprentice, Huntress, Monk, and Squire from 2 MP/s to 3 MP/s. * Abyss Stone damage increased by 10%, but Abyss Knight damaged decreased by 10%. ** Abyss Lord's primary damage ability is intended to be his Abyss Stone, but we've noticed the trend is to spam Abyss Knight more so when it comes down to brass tax. ** As a result, we're moving some of his damage dealing power from Abyss Knight to Abyss Stone to separate the functions of these two abilities a little more. ** Fixed several Abyss Lord and EV2 ability descriptions incorrectly specifying they scaled from stats they did not scale from. Abilities scale from Ability Power. * Molten Brimstone Tome now has proper gameplay values, scales entirely from Ability Power, and functions more usefully at shard level 1. * Power of Storms shard has been refactored completely. ** Shard description updated to state the new effect. When triggered, it increases mana regeneration by 20 MP/s for 3s but has a 10s cooldown (at max level). * Shards that deal damage directly now have proper, unique Crit Damage scalars. ** Crit Damage from these shard attacks can no longer reach infinite values… Campaign Balance Changes * Enemy levels in Campaign have been increased to account for the increases in overall defense damage. * Hero level 1 stats slightly increased to account for slight increase to enemy levels in campaign ** Except EV2. Her level 1 stats were slightly decreased, because for some reason they were way, way, way higher than everyone else’s…. * Certain intro enemies had their HP reduced in the campaign (Lady Orc, Wyvern, etc.) Chaos Balance Changes * Enemy levels in Chaos have been increased slightly to account for the increases in overall defense damage. ** We paid specific attention to enemies that are generally not affected by defenses (Witherbeast, Siege Rollers, etc.) and re-weighted their stats accordingly. They can still be slain in a timely fashion only by heroes. * In combination with the above changes, we’ve reduced the Chaos 1 enemy level by 10%. The result of this along with our defense balance changes should result in a smoother entry into Chaos 1. We’ll continue to monitor both player feedback and our internal data to see how players are progressing into Chaos 1. Stuck Special Enemy Fixes One of the biggest bugs we wanted to fix was the Stuck Special Enemy bug where Siege Rollers and other Special Enemies were getting stuck in their spawners. Our world builders have gone through the maps reported to us and changed geometry within the spawners that were causing trouble. If you see a stuck Special Enemy after this patch, please report it to our bug site! Bug Fixes * Fixed a crash when replaying The Wyvern’s Den. * Fixed a duplicating bug in the Inventory. * Slow improvements now show as benefits rather than negatives on all inspect and Ascension Power interfaces. * Mana Bomb no longer causes the Flamethrower to stop attacking. * Flamethrowers will now attack the Demon Lord. * Fixed Shield Geodes touching Cores and setting them to 3K health. * Shield Geodes moving over EV nodes will no longer create a Shield on the nodes. * Frosty Bind Shard now properly improves slow speed. * Howling Feast Shard now functions properly. * Withering Fountain Shard now functions properly. * Lateral Blast Shard now properly deals damage. * Mega Rock Shard now properly deals damage. * Rain of Oil Shard ignite now properly deals damage. * Defense Crit Damage and Destruction Shards now work on EV2’s Buff Beam. * Weapon Manufacturer now updates if you equip gear after it’s built. * Monk Skyguard Slow Ascension Power now properly caps at 20. * Lightning Touch Shard, Water Elemental Shard, and Shattering Torpedo Shard now deal proper bonus damage. ** These shards had bugs that would sometimes cause them to deal considerably more or less amounts of extra damage. The damage stated on the shard description is now their actual bonus damage and should show properly as damage numbers. * Fixed an issue where the Flamethrower would try to target enemies outside of its range. * Fixed a bug where the Pumpkinator Shard was applying to defenses of the hero who equips it. * Fixed an Inventory tooltip issue that would display items with the wrong item type information. * Rain of Oil Shard description clarified. * Bots of Oil Shard description clarified. * Updated EV2 Shard descriptions. * Updated several Shard descriptions that used incorrect stat names. * Shard and Shard Pack tooltips now display their sell price. * Mystic’s Defense Crit Chance Ascension Power now displays the proper number. * When EV2 nodes are stunned, all nodes display the stun VFX. * Fixed an issue where the Ascension Point displays would overlap. * Updated The Dead Road boss schedule to spawn from Wave 2 onwards. * Fixed goofy Monk weapon holding in certain situations. * Fixed VFX on the Quake Shard. * Harbinger Squad challenges updated to be completed on Campaign Hard instead of Nightmare II. * Fixed a sub-objective naming issue on Forgotten Ruins. * Gold Ingots now look like Gold Ingots instead of weird Gold Crystals. * Campaign Relics no longer have a chance to generate with Defense Range. * Fixed lighting issues on several maps. * Fixed collision issues on several maps. * Fixed several typo issues. * Fixed an issue where some costumes were displaying incorrect names and descriptions. 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